Thank you to Fr Robert Krishna OP for this homily on the Gospel reading of today. It is such a difficult Gospel to unpack and he has done it so beautifully and given us much food for thought as we look to what we wish to accomplish in our spiritual lives this Lent.
Jesus’ behaviour in today’s Gospel is very strange. He could have healed the leper just with his word. This would have been the normal thing to do. Because as the first reading tells us, lepers were outcasts. They had to make their uncleanness known to everyone. They were not fit for normal human society. Touching a leper was dangerous. By touching him you might contract his illness. Even if you did not contract his disease, you acquired his impurity. You became unclean. Like him, you too were cut off from the rest of Israel. Still, knowing all this, Jesus goes out of his way to touch this man.
Mark underlines Jesus’ personal involvement in this man’s plight. Our English translation says, blandly, “he felt sorry for him.” The Greek is much more expressive. Literally it says “he felt a gut-wrenching pity for him.” So Jesus heals this man in a very gentle, personal, way, not just saying “I do want to: be healed,” but actually curing him by touch. Jesus was probably the first non-leper to touch the man or have any sort of contact with him for many years. Jesus not only heals the leper, but also admits him back into society. The leper becomes a normal human being again.
Against this background, Jesus’ next actions and words to the man appear shockingly harsh and brutal. Again, the translation tones down the original. Literally, the Greek says that, after healing the man, Jesus rebuked him and threw him out saying “See that you tell no one.” Why this sudden change? Is Jesus afraid of what he has done, afraid that if the man tells people, as he does immediately, the result will be personally damaging? Is he scared of what must (and does) follow, that he will have to live like a leper, avoid cities and wander in the wilderness? But that is not the Jesus we know, Jesus who argues boldly with the Pharisees and the temple authorities, Jesus who is not afraid even to die on a cross. So, what is going on here?
Jesus’ interaction with the leper encapsulates his entire mission toward humanity in the incarnation. In Jesus, we see that God does not respond to our need from afar. He is deeply moved by pity to come down to us. When he comes to rescue us from the mess we have made, he does not hesitate to get his own hands messy. He becomes one of us, takes on our weakness. The God who cannot suffer want or pain or death takes on a human body in which he can indeed suffer for us.
God reaches out and touches us, each and every one of us, in his son, Jesus Christ. But at the same time, Jesus can easily be misunderstood. Many people, then as now, see in Jesus merely a healer, and a wonder worker. After all, when he healed the leper, nobody could look ahead and see him dying on the Cross. But Jesus knew. He knew that his mission could only be understood in the light of his death on the cross. He knew that if people came to him merely as a miracle-working healer, they could derive no lasting benefit from him. So strange as this may sound, Jesus’ rebuke of the healed leper reveals just as much of his concern for the man as does his reaching out to touch him. Jesus warns the man not to talk about how he had been healed, not to protect himself, but to prevent the man from preaching a Christ he did not understand, a Christ who was just another celebrity miracle monger.
Jesus does not want to avoid becoming an outcast. He willingly becomes a outcast to avoid becoming a celebrity. If the whole episode is a symbol of the entire mission of the Son of God towards humanity, his journey to the wilderness foreshadows the passion. This is how far he is willing to go. Jesus is not just ready to come to us and heal us with his touch. He is willing to become an outcast from humanity so that he can unite us to God.
Today’s readings challenge us. How do we see Jesus and his work in our lives? Are we just content to let him be a miracle worker to whom we run in times of trouble? As Lent approaches, we are being challenged to go with Jesus on his journey outside, his march to the cross. We’re being called to make sacrifices which really do cost us, to give up those things which we think we can’t live without. We’re being invited to pray even when we don’t think we need it, or we don’t feel like praying at all. We are being shown how to reach out in heartfelt charity even to people in our lives who we don’t think deserve it. This is what God did for us in Jesus.
~ By Fr Robert Krishna OP
